Indonesian Lunch and New Mall Excursion…

Bérangère’s Paris adventures strike again with a nice invitation for me and Flavia to join her for lunch at the Indonesian Embassy! A fun concept offered by some of the Embassies in Paris. It allows visitors a chance to see the Embassy and sample their country’s cuisine. How it works: spouses or employees of the Embassy coalition prepare traditional foods, you pick up prepared meals (purchase at a very small price) at the Embassy cantina (cafeteria)… you can sit, sample and enjoy among Embassy staff or take home…it’s a very clever way to experience a different culture’s food without purchasing a plane ticket. You do have to pass through security and one person has to surrender their passport until you exit.

After lunch we visited a new suburban mall that had just opened up (about 10 minutes by local train) outside of Paris. This mall was big and beautiful. I did take one picture to show you a modern piece of technology that was implemented at the mall…you place your “mall card” (like our supermarket discount card) over a kiosk and the kiosk will tell you what store and what discounts you can get on that day…so now you know your sales options without having to walk the entire mall looking at each store (great news for non-shoppers/guys). After reviewing the kiosk’s information, you simply go to the store and hand them your mall card at check out to receive the sale prices…no more carrying 20 different store credit or loyalty cards for each individual store’s discounts to be granted to you (I don’t know if our credit card companies would like this system:)…but it really helps you stream line your time at the mall, if you have a set agenda and/or only shop at certain stores and you simply want to see what sales your favorite stores are offering before you spend a lot of time walking around (again, I don’t know if the US marketing machine mindset of getting you to walk and browse so you make impulse purchases will like this time saving system).

Oh, we also stopped at a very nice Japanese pastry shop after our Indonesian lunch before heading to the new mall…the only reason we stopped was to get some energy for the big 10 minute journey….Honestly, it’s because Flavia had no will power to just walk by the pastries being displayed….Ok, it was me…I can’t lie !!